Tim Engartner:
If you don’t know anything, you have to believe a lot. But can you really rely on any medium when you’re looking for answers to questions – especially in times of disinformation campaigns using fake news? Hardly. Filter bubbles created via social media platforms are reducing our educational space by sidelining reliable (scientific) findings on armed conflicts, healthy diets or aspects of climate change. If the openness of educational spaces, which is constitutive for learning processes, is undermined, the openness of our society also suffers. We cannot expect democracy without broad-based educational offerings, because the political opinion-forming process, which is fundamental to free and democratic basic orders, presupposes the interest of citizens in political matters, says education expert Tim Engartner. Daycare centers, schools and universities must be committed to promoting democracy as a rock in the surf, he also demands in his current book “Raus aus der Bildungsfalle”.
Assuming that democracies cannot be guaranteed to last forever, political education in particular must not only take place in the relevant disciplines according to the subject principle, but also in the form of an interdisciplinary teaching principle. All subjects anchored in the timetables must make a contribution to political education in order to enable young people to become capable of democracy. If a Brecht quote is analyzed in German lessons, election advertising is interpreted in art lessons, or nuclear energy production is discussed in physics lessons, these lessons should also make a contribution to the formation of political opinions.
Fulfilling these demands is also urgent because democratic awareness is not an anthropological constant, but must be learned on a daily basis. One of the central tasks of political education is to question prejudices and create spaces for encounters so that strangers can get to know, understand and appreciate one another (»contact hypothesis«). In the course of these encounters, it must become clear that a civil society thrives on the mutual recognition of different lifestyles, cultures and perspectives.
Daycare centers, schools and universities must be committed to promoting democracy as rocks in the surf. Children and young people must experience opportunities to participate in shaping things, which means that the children’s conference in the daycare center must have just as much of a place as the class council, the student council and the school conference or student representation via the departments at universities. Education – especially political education – must strengthen our democracy more than ever, because a lack of social ties, the often unanswered desire to belong and the sometimes unchecked pressure from the peer group lead young people in particular to a search for collective substitute identities. National identity and ethnic affiliation provide orientation precisely for those who have lost their way – or at least believe they are.
The resulting distortions of the binding forces of a democratic society committed to humanity and social balance are already evident in the form of political polarization, but the profound social upheavals threaten to continue. The loss of the “ligatures” described by Ralf Dahrendorf more than a quarter of a century ago – understood as “deep cultural ties that enable people to find their way through the world of options” – is progressing inexorably. Churches, parties and unions are increasingly failing to act as identity-forming links: the former mainstream parties SPD and CDU have lost around half their members since 1990. According to forecasts, by 2060 only 22 million German citizens, or just over a quarter of the population of the Federal Republic, will belong to one of the two major churches; most unions are also experiencing a continuous bloodletting.
It is essential to keep this development in mind, as the social and parliamentary consolidation of right-wing populism and extremism is putting our democracy to a severe test. The radicalization of the political, media and cultural public – think of the video clips of the so-called Identitarian Movement, the concerts of so-called right-wing rock bands or the Pegida and Legida demonstrations – is as visible as it is audible and can therefore no longer be denied. At the same time, the normalization of right-wing populist politics in the form of the parliamentary representation of the AfD reveals that democratic principles as the basis for successful coexistence are no longer recognized, no longer understood or even rejected by a growing part of society. Established democratic principles are being violated more and more. In order to maintain or awaken sensitivity to the advantages of our democracy as a state and way of life in a historically exceptionally politicized, emotionalized and mediatized time, (political) education is needed.
If we want to counter the disillusionment with parties, facts and institutions that can also be felt among young people, as well as the rise of right-wing populism that is (as a result) sustaining itself, we must recognize that our efforts must not only extend from migration and tax policy to social and labor market policy and transport and housing policy, but that (political) education also needs its space. According to an article published in the magazine of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Herfried Münkler rightly sees populism as “the decisive rejection of the demands of learning” when he justifies the election of Donald Trump as US president, among other things, by saying that he “absolved his voters from the laborious preoccupation with factual issues.”
And here too, a growing part of the population is refusing to accept the political, social and economic complexity in times of the “new confusion” identified by Jürgen Habermas back in 1985. Revitalizing public interest in politically negotiated issues is therefore an indispensable prerequisite for cohesion and ultimately the existence of a democratic society, and not just with regard to political participation in the context of elections. Since right-wing populism, which has been emerging for a decade now, is threatening the foundations of our value, social and legal system, we must learn to show attitude rather than restraint. This urgently requires (more) (political) education.
